Why Letting Go Of Her Approval Is The First Step To Saving Your Marriage

Hey, Cody Butler here, and in this video I want to talk about a question that I've been emailed in from many, many clients, and that is, my wife wants a divorce and I've changed, but she doesn't believe that I've changed. So how do we overcome this? What's the solution? What's going on here? I'm going to tell you exactly what's happening and how to change this in this video. So the situation is your wife wants a divorce, she's emotionally checked out of the marriage, she doesn't— she's lost trust in you, she's lost trust in your ability to change, and she stopped believing that change is is even possible within the marriage. So the first thing to point out here is to understand who your wife and what your wife is actually leaving, because this is critical. If you understand how she's making her decisions, then you stand a chance of influencing those decisions in a positive way. So she's not leaving who you are right now, and she's not leaving who you've been in the past. She's leaving the future version of you. She's looking at the future that you are presenting to her, or the promise that you're making, And she's looking at that future and going, can I live with this future? Is this a future that I want? Is this a future man that I want to be with? And that is ultimately what she's making her decision on because there's only 2 reasons why she said yes to you in the first place, and if you can understand these, it makes it really easy to fix the situation. And that is she— the first reason is she loved the way you made her feel about herself, and the second reason is that she believed that a future with you was better than a future without you. Now she's leaving, the opposite is true. And she doesn't like how she feels around you, and she looks at the future with you and sees that as being a worse option than the future without you. So when you can understand that, then it helps you, it helps us to move forward with making positive changes that are believable that she can buy into. So the common male frustration that I hear all the time with working with men is, I'm finally changing and she still doesn't believe me. I finally arrived at a place where I can see that I have challenges and issues and I need to work on those. I've made those changes and now I've done it. She's still not believing me. So the typical response here is one of panic, trying— it's trying harder to prove the changes that you've made, seeking recognition from her about those changes, wanting reassurance and recognition that she is actually seeing those changes. So what men don't change, or when a woman says a man never changes, or you haven't changed, what she actually What that means is that she has had repeated exposure to your promises in the past without any lasting transformation. She's seen temporary change under pressure, maybe in the past, and she's seen a cycle that just repeats itself. You get put in a situation where you have to make a change, you make that change, and then of course she's disappointed. And all that happens is every time this cycle repeats is that she's convinced That you are not capable of change. Or in other words, her change or her belief about you has been changed through future experience. So again, when you understand that she is leaving a future version of you, the way she arrives at who that future version of you is, is through going through her nervous system or predictive mechanism, looking at everything that you've done in the past, and then predicting how you're going to show up in the future based on how you've behaved in the past. So the thing to understand here is that what's going on in your marriage right now at this moment in time today is not an indication of what's going on in the marriage today. It's a lagging indicator. It's— she's responding to the man that you have been in the past, in the present, and she's making her decisions about the man who you are going to be in the future. So the present moment in the marriage Although it's very important for you to understand that this is where you start to interrupt her predictive patterns and her confirmation bias. For her, it's not important at all. She's making decisions based on the lagging indicator of who you've been in the past and the future prediction of who you're going to be in the future. So I hear all the time women say men don't change or people don't change. Well, that's not true. Let's make a very important distinction here. People Do change absolutely happens all the time. But what is true is you cannot change somebody. People cannot be be changed externally. I can't make you change. You can't make me change. You can't make your wife change, and your wife can't make you change. Nobody can make anybody else change. But can change take place? Absolutely. But you have to do it for your reasons, for your motivation. And if you want to change your wife, this is why. We always say work on yourself, work on what you have control over, because if you think you're going to change her, then you're, you're, you're making a losing bet there. And if your wife thinks that she can change you, that's also a losing bet. But people do absolutely change, but the distinction is they do it for their own reasons. Or in other words, real transformation comes through personal internal choice. You're not going to pressure me into changing, you're not going to make me change out of fear, and you're not going to make me change Because you're trying to control or manipulate the situation. This is not how transformation takes place. So why is she struggling right now to believe that you've changed? Well, there's a couple of reasons potentially, and the first one is that timing absolutely matters. So change often appears, and the chances are if you're watching this video and you're saying, she's told me what needs to happen and I've changed, or whatever, it's like The change has only appeared after extreme pain has shown up, or in other words, you're not actually changing because you want to change. You're changing because you need some pain relief. Change has also potentially only shown up after the threat of divorce or the divorce has been introduced, or in other words, only after consequences arrive. So unfortunately, as men, this is our this is our instinctive operating system, right? This is what we do. Generally speaking, we don't take action. Until we have consequences that we have to deal with. Women are much more preemptive in dealing with situations. A woman will try to heal the marriage and correct the situation and help the marriage long before it's inevitable that the marriage collapses or that it becomes a point of severe pain. She acts preemptively. Unfortunately, as men, we tend to respond to consequences. Once the Once the situation has arrived and we're forced to deal with it, then we have to deal with it. So unfortunately, if the woman is looking at the situation going, well, you're only doing this because I've threatened to leave you, or you're only doing this because you're in pain, or you're only doing this because there's cost, so the fact that you're changing now, it's very poor timing as far as she's concerned. So the logical conclusion that your wife jumps to here is that this change is only designed to stop me from leaving. It's not real, it's not genuine, you're not doing this because you're looking at yourself and seeing a man that needs to change, you're not looking at a situation that you can't live with, you're basically just doing this as pain relief, and again, when I start working with men, I've worked with thousands of men now over the years, and the question is, are you doing this because you just want the pain to stop, or are you doing this because you— this is a wake-up call for you, and you're not happy with how you've been showing up in this marriage, you're not happy with who you've been showing up as in this marriage? And a lot of times, the facts of the matter are you're only actually doing this. The man is only actually doing this because he wants the pain to stop. And if that's the case, then this this transformation is going to be temporary, and your wife's refusal to believe the transformation to be real is actually accurate and justified at that point. So the questions behind her distrust. of your change is she's questioning the timing, she's questioning the motivation, she's questioning the authenticity of the change, and she's questioning the permanency of the change. And from her perspective, it's important that as men we understand that this is legitimate. These are legitimate questions. She's looking at a future and going, I'm committing the rest of my life to this man, or I'm potentially making decisions that are going to affect both of our lives and our children's lives and a lot of other influence factors as well, finances, etc. She needs to know honest answers to these questions. What is your motivation? What is the authenticity of these changes, etc.? If we demonize our wife for questioning our changes and distrusting our changes, then we're treating her in a way that is very inauthentic because she has every right and in fact is making good decisions by actually questioning this, and when we understand that she's doing the right thing by questioning our changes, it makes it much easier for us to go the distance and do what we need to do to turn this around. So the fear that's going on in her head right now, and this is most likely backed up by previous patterns, is that once the pressure disappears from her, once she agrees to come back or the divorce threat is over, Your old patterns return, and chances are that this is exactly what's happened in the past, right? So the mistake that most men make in this moment is they think that she's not seeing my changes. But what's actually happening is she is seeing the changes; she simply rejects them, distrusts them, or she's just not bringing them up and and highlighting them to you because she doesn't. She wants to see how you react in the absence of. Those changes being recognized. So a great example of this is with my wife when— my in-laws live in Sydney and we went to visit them one time. And it can always be a point of friction. There's always potential conflict when we visit the in-laws. And I made a real effort to keep the harmony and keep the situation smooth. And my wife and I had the same personal trainer at the time. And when we got back, when we got home a few days later, I was with my personal trainer who my wife had been with earlier that day, and he goes, you really impressed your wife in Sydney. I said, what are you talking about? I don't know anything about that. And he goes, she's really impressed with your behavior and she's really happy with what happened in Sydney. And I go, first I know about that. She hasn't told me about that. And this is, this is what's happening. We think that because she's not recognizing them or not acknowledging them that she's not noticing them. The truth of the matter is she's seeing everything and she's logging everything. She's just not going to tell you about it because how you respond in the absence of praise or recognition is significantly more informative to her than how you respond if you get given a carrot, for example. So she says what she does here is she actually suppresses those emotional reactions, the positive responses that you're looking for, because she, she's trying to avoid raising your emotional intensity falsely. She's trying to avoid giving you false hope. Because again, many times when a woman gives feedback to a man saying, I see your changes and I see the effort that you're making, she's simply acknowledging a fact. She's, she's acknowledging that she is seeing the changes. She's not saying that that's going to change her mind. She's simply acknowledging the fact that she's seeing the changes. That is also a thing as well. And she's trying to maintain her own emotional protection in the situation. So if she's decided to leave this marriage, which is the Which is true at this time, then she doesn't want to make it harder to do that, basically. So for a woman to leave a marriage, to get to the point to where she's told the man that she's going to leave the marriage, it's like a fly trying to get out of a spider web. She's been caught in this marriage and it's actually truly a tremendous amount of effort for her to get out of this marriage, and when she finally does get the courage and she's told you that she wants a divorce, she's not in a hurry to emotionally entangle herself back in that web again. So A lot of times she's going to suppress those emotions from you because she doesn't want to get tangled up in that web again and make it difficult. That does not mean that she's not seeing changes or she's not— it's not causing her to question what's going on in her mind. She's just not communicating that to you. So a lot of men when this happens is they go, how can I, how can I show a Cody that I've changed? How can I prove to her that I've changed? How can I show her these things? Well, the first thing I want to say is like, The more you try to prove it, the more it backfires because it feels performative. You don't, you don't tell somebody that you've changed. You demonstrate that you've changed. And the example that I always use is like, if you're on fire, you don't need to stand next to somebody and explain to them what heat is. You don't need to explain to them what fire is. All you need to do if you're on fire is stand next to that person and let them feel the heat. So The next thing is when you try to prove your changes, this creates pressure. It creates outcome attachment, and it creates— it becomes emotionally transactional. It's like, if I do this, will you do that? And it creates an environment where it makes it very difficult for her to trust what's going on. And ultimately, again, when we look at divorce, we have to understand why a woman is exiting the marriage, and it really is only one thing ultimately. Like, everything plays into this. Everything falls into this category, and she's trying to get some pressure relief. She's trying to escape some pressure, and it's got to the point to where the only way she can get that pressure relief is outside of the marriage. Now, if she's determined that the only way she can experience that relief is to leave the marriage, and then she leaves the marriage or threatens to leave the marriage, in, in that situation, you continue to apply even more pressure. You've communicated to her now that she can't get any emotional relief or Or pressure relief within the marriage, nor can she get it without the marriage if you're still involved in her life. Now, now we have to go to the third option, which is she leaves the marriage and she wants nothing to do with you. So the one thing that I would say here is many men watching this, and many men that I've worked with, they've done stuff in the marriage that, that they've tried to hide from their wives. They've had an affair, gambling, porn addiction, something like that. And many of us have, right? We pretty much all have something that we try to hide. And in reality, it's like the question that I asked is like, when you actively tried to hide behavior, she found it out. Now that you want her to see the behavior, do you think she's not going to find that out too? The reality is that behavior is on display for the world to see whether you know it or not. There really are no secrets and whether your behavior is good or bad, your changes are real or fake, she's going to see that one way or another and you don't need to worry about her finding out or seeing it. If the change is genuine, then she's going to find that out in the same way that when behavior was— when it was attempted to hide that behavior, she found that out as well. So the test here of genuine change is that if the change is genuine, why does it need recognition to continue? If the number— the philosophy here driving this, the success philosophy, is I do the right thing because it's the right thing to do regardless of the outcome. Ultimately, this is a leadership issue, and true leadership says, I do the right thing because it's the right thing to do regardless of the outcome. And when that is put in place here, if the change is genuine because the change is required and necessary and it's the right thing to do, why does it need recognition to continue? And the reality is it doesn't if it's genuine. So let's talk about outcome-attached change. So This looks like if I change, then she should respond to it, or she should— I need some response. What this is is conditional transformation, or it's the Pavlovian dog reward system. If you reward me, then I'm going to continue to change, and if you don't reward me, then I'm not going to continue to change. And as we go through the process of reconciliation, as we go through the 7 steps of reconciliation that we cover in, in the Win Your Wife Back program, in the men that I work with— and if you're interested in that, Check out some of the information in the description here. A lot of the information, like I can only give you a very limited amount of information on these videos in YouTube. If you want to actually truly save your marriage, then there's a ton of stuff that we, that you need to do that we cover in the Win Your Wife Back program. But basically part of the reconciliation process is she's going to test your changes. Are they genuine or are they performative? Are they conditional on me coming back? And one of the ways that a woman will often do this is she removes all hope from the marriage. Right. If you're showing signs of change that she likes, the only way that she can understand or determine if these changes are legitimate and real are by removing— is by removing hope from the marriage and seeing how you respond to that. And if she removes hope and says, I see your changes but I want a divorce anyway, or I appreciate the man you're becoming but I want a divorce anyway, and you continue with the forward momentum of the changes, then she can see that your changes are legitimate and real, and it gives her grounds to believe those changes. And I've worked with men where I've worked with— what I'm thinking of, one specific example where I was working with a man for a period of time and he's like, I'm changing, I'm changing, I'm changing. Then finally I do a one-to-one call with him and he goes, I was at a barbecue, at a barbecue with my wife this year, and, uh, this, this weekend, and she told me that she still wants a divorce. I'm getting really tired of this bitch. All this effort and she still wants the divorce. And it's like, well, she kind of just proved the point, didn't she? She took hope from you, and your response was, I'm getting tired of this bitch. She knows exactly what she's dealing with now, and quite frankly, she's played the card of hands well, and or hand of cards well, and now she she you've you confirmed that her decision to leave was a good one. Had that man played it differently, and the woman said, I you know I appreciate everything that you're doing, but I still want a divorce, and he said, that's fine. This is not about saving the marriage. This is about me becoming the man I know to become. He would have potentially still been on the field, still in the game with a chance. So what happens here is that the, the change in behavior becomes tied to reconciliation, becomes to— becomes tied to validation, becomes to an emotional payoff of some kind. And in other words, it's performative. This is just performative change. You're not actually changing because you want to change. You're only changing because you going to get some kind of payoff, and she's going to figure that out. So part of the question here is when a man says, my wife is not recognizing my changes, one of the first questions that I always ask is, are the changes real, or have you even made the changes? This is, this is, uh, this is a good point, right? One of the key, one of the key questions, or one of the key principles that we operate in the Win Your Wife Back program is never grade your own homework. Who told you that these changes are even noticeable or that you're making changes in the right, in the right direction. Quite often a man believes that he's making changes and his wife's just refusing to acknowledge them when actually he's deluded himself and he's really not making changes, or he's making a very insignificant amount of effort compared to what needs to be done. So again, when you do this, when you make the effort to create an outcome within the marriage, you're doing it simply because you want your wife back. It feels strategic, it feels Feels manipulated, it feels temporary, and she's not gonna buy it. She's not gonna believe the changes. So the lesson here is genuine change does not need immediate validation from me, from your wife, or from anyone else. If you're operating under the core principle of I do the right thing because it's the right thing to do regardless of the outcome, no validation is needed. So this whole premise of my wife is not recognizing my change. Changes becomes obsolete in a second. So real transformation, man, persists regardless of the outcome, regardless of recognition, regardless of reassurance, etc., etc. And ultimately, change becomes identity-based instead of outcome-based. Or in other words, you look in the mirror and you see a man that you do not want to be anymore, and you change. Because you don't like the man. You're seeing— you start to see yourself again. One of the, one of the goals when I work with men is, is to help them see themselves as everybody else, as their wife sees them, as their family sees them, and not to see the situation worse than it is and not to see the situation better than it is. And 9 times out of 10, when the man sees himself as he truly is, not as he thinks he is, he sees himself as his wife sees him and as everybody else sees him. Then he chooses to change himself because it becomes unacceptable to him. He wants to change. He doesn't like how he's been showing up, and he's not changing because it's going to get him a result. He changes because his identity requires it of him. So real change looks like, uh, who are you when nobody is watching? That's the question, right? Who you are and how you show up when you've got a belly full of food, a good night's sleep, and, and your wife is responding well to you— that is not the measure of the man you are. The measure of the man you are is who are you when you're tired, when you're hungry, when you're cold, when your wife is continuing to reject you and tell you that she wants a divorce. That is what is— that, that is what determines who you are. Consistency outside of the marriage context. It's like, are you applying these principles to every aspect of your life, to work, to parenting, to friendships, to emotional regulation, to every aspect of your life? Or are you simply making these changes within the context of marriage? How you do anything is how you do everything. If you tidy up one aspect of your life, that has to apply to every aspect of your life. And quite often, the measure of what the— if the change is legitimate or not is, are you applying these changes to every aspect of your life? Because at the end of the day, the measurement that we use is the fruit of your life is real. The fruit is revealed by, or the root is revealed the fruit, right? The fruit reveals the root. So if you want to know what is the root of this man, look at the fruit of his life. And quite frankly, the thing I really want you to take away from this, and any man that I work with, the first thing that I say is, I'm not your guide. I'm not your coach. I'm not your mentor. I simply want to shine a light into your life and show you the fruit. Let's let reality coach you. Let's let reality guide you. And if your marriage is in chaos right now, if your marriage is in collapse, that reveals the root of a man who simply doesn't have the skills or the psychology or the philosophy to maintain a successful marriage. And the man that says, "I have all of those things," but the fruit of that is the marriage is still collapsing, is deluded, and is not going to save his marriage. The truth of the matter is. An orange tree will never produce a lemon, and a lemon tree will never produce an orange. If you look at a tree and it has oranges hanging from it, then the root of that tree is an orange tree root. Never does the fruit of the tree become a bitter fruit, a sour fruit, and then you have a sweet root. If the marriage is collapsing, that's revealing the root of a man who needs psychological philosophy. Philosophy and behavioral transformation. And I know this is difficult to hear sometimes, but if you— if a man wants to hold the position that I'm doing nothing wrong, my psychology is fine, my behavior is fine, my understanding of marriage and relationships are fine, my philosophy and psychology— my philosophies are fine, yet the tree is covered in sour fruit, that man is delusional and he is not going— it's very unlikely that he is going to To save his marriage. So again, transformation is observed indirectly over time. This is not something you do for a week and then expect your wife to recognize this. So why does silent observation matter? Well, she's watching quietly from a distance, as I mentioned with my story with my trip to Sydney and my gym instructor, my personal coach. She's looking for consistency, stability, performance, emotional regulation, Under pressure, and she's looking, she's watching that from a distance. She's not necessarily— your wife is not necessarily, and is most probably not communicating this to you in real time. So what's going on here is her predictive mechanism, also known as her nervous system, and again, let's pull this back to what we said earlier on. She's leaving, or she's deciding to stay, not with the present version of you, But who she's predicting the future version of you is going to be. If I stay with this man, what is my life going to look like? What am I going to experience in the future? Not what is going to happen right now and today. So when she's looking at that, when she's looking at your change from the perspective of, is this change significant enough for me to reassess my decision to leave this marriage? She's looking at, is this sustainable? Is this who he really is now? Meaning, is this the man that I'm going to be living with in the future, or is this just a temporary situation that once the pain goes away, he's going to go back to who he was? And she's getting that prediction from the past, not the present. Now, the only way that is going to change is the present has to become the past, because that is where she is making her predictions from. Or in other ways, in other words, you have to maintain this behavior for long enough to where it stops being your behavior in the present, and this now becomes your past behavior as well as your present behavior. Now she looks at who you were in the past, she looks at who you are in the present, and that allows her to make a prediction of who you're going to be in the future, and that is where she's going to decide this marriage. So the critical principles to understand here is words do not rebuild rebuild trust in late-stage marriage crisis, in a divorce situation. Patterns rebuild trust. Consistency rebuilds trust. Calmness rebuilds trust. Or consistent execution regardless of emotion is the philosophy. Consistent execution regardless of emotion. Can you continue to execute this consistently even when she tells you that it's over, even when you're getting negative signals from her? This is the question. That's a good question, right? And time reveals authenticity. Her predictive mechanism or nervous system is pulling from the past much, much more than from the present, and only time will reveal to her the authenticity of what you're doing right now. If you cannot become calm, if you cannot become patient with this, and you cannot continue, if you cannot act positively without the need for constant reassurance, Then your behavior in the present will never become the past and she will never make a different prediction than what she's making right now. And as a result, the marriage simply won't change. So what this does not mean for you is waiting forever, tolerating abuse, becoming passive, abandoning self-respect, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Again, what this does mean is removing transactional energy from the situation, reducing pressure. She's leaving the marriage because she wants pressure reduced. Implying more pressure is not helpful. Becoming genuinely a different person to be around, allowing change to become naturally observable, right? Not forcing it or manipulating it or controlling it or asking the question, how do I get her to see my changes? That's a manipulation. If you are making changes and you are executing that behavior day in, day out over a consistent period of time, she's going to see that and she's going to have no choice but to respond to that. Over time. So the core internal shift to make here is to stop asking the question, how do I make her believe me? How do I get her to see my changes? And start asking the question, am I actually becoming someone who's believable? Because it doesn't matter if she can see your changes or not. If she doesn't believe you based on the prediction that she's making from the past version of you, then the issue is not that she's not seeing your changes. The issue is that you are not someone who is believable. Believable. This becomes the question, and this is the more intelligent question: am I becoming someone who she can believe, that she can buy into? So our core takeaway here is confirmation bias is emotional self-protection. She's protecting herself from a negative future by biasing towards your behavior in the past. Desperation or neediness weakens your credibility. Performative change creates distrust, or in other words, needing that you're needing your changes or your transformation to be recognized and demanding it, or continually pushing for that recognition. All that does is create distrust. It's counterproductive in what you're going for here, and genuine transformation becomes undeniable through consistency over time. If you are genuinely the fire, you don't need to explain to people what heat is. You just need to stand next to them. And let them feel it. So our goal here is not to convince her or show her that you've changed. The goal here that saves marriages is to become genuinely different and to execute that regardless of emotion over an extended period of time to where the present you blends into the past you and there's consistency between history and present, and then that allows her to make a different prediction of a different future, one that she can see herself in and she can allow you in. So our conclusion here, man, let's wrap this up, is most men accidentally reinforce distrust through pressure, by applying pressure and urgency and needing to see their changes recognized. Emotional safety, which is the key to rebuilding the marriage, rebuilds through observable consistent behavior over time, or in other words, consistent execution devoid of emotion. If you want to screw your marriage up and ruin it, the formula for failure is inconsistent execution driven by emotion. Or in other words, every time she gives you a signal that's negative, it sends you into a tailspin and your execution becomes inconsistent in that moment. You have to become bigger than her mood. You have to become calmer and consistent throughout whatever she's going to throw at you, because she's going to throw a lot at you. And if you're— if you adopt a position or you act from a place of inconsistently executing, driven by her emotion, this is not going to end well for you. So if you want to learn more about how you can save your marriage, I've got a workshop link in the description called You Can Win Her Back. I also have Cody AI, which is if you want some specific— or you want specific guidance into your situation. It's an AI that I've created where you can get Every— you— it's like exactly the same as talking to me, trained on over 5,000, uh, coaching sessions, thousands and thousands of hours. It is exactly the same as talking to me. Links are in the description for that. And if you like this content, help me out, man. Give me a thumbs up, leave it, leave a comment, and, uh, subscribe to the channel for more information. God bless you, and I'll see you all very, very soon.