Why Your Wife Seems So Cold After Asking for Divorce

Hey, Cody Butler here, and in this video I want to talk to you about your wife's asked for a divorce or separation and she's just cold. She's just acting like there's no problem, it's fine, and you just don't understand why she acting so cold, why she acting so heartless. Did she never care? Did she never love me? Well, let's look at what's actually going on here, do some myth-busting, and put you in a position where if you want to save this marriage, give you the tools that you need to actually understand what's going on, how to change the situation. The question is, how can she be so okay with this? How can she be the ice queen? How can she be so cold? Because I'm really struggling with this, right? Like, the experience that the husband has is she's smiling, she's laughing, she's going out with her friends, she's functioning normally, she seems happy about this, and she seems completely emotionally unaffected by the fact that maybe a multi-decade marriage with a ton of history is coming to an end. Why doesn't she care about this? So while that's going on over here and she's continuing to live her life like nothing's happened, you're ready to go to bat here. You're ready to go and fight for this marriage. You're panicking, you can't sleep at night, you're trying to figure out what's going on. You want to make changes to do the right thing. You can't eat, you can't sleep, you can't, you can't think. Your whole world is falling apart around you You really want desperately to do something to save this marriage, and she's just going around like nothing's going on, like she just never cared, right? So the obvious, and I'm going to propose incorrect, conclusion to draw at this point in time— I'm also going to explain why this is incorrect— is that she never loved me, she doesn't care, she couldn't care less about this marriage, she's already moved on, she's already decided that this is over, and took her no time at all. This marriage meant nothing to her all along, etc., etc. So the key thing to understand here in this situation is it's not so much that you're looking at two different set of emotions, right? You've got your, your set of emotions here, which is like you're ready to go to bat for this marriage and you're ready to fight. And her set of emotions are detachment, coldness, quite frankly, she acts like she just doesn't care, right? It's not that the emotions are different or you've experienced different emotions. The problem is, man, is that you're looking at two completely different timelines here. She's on one timeline, you're on a different timeline, and you're both experiencing the same emotions. They've just— they don't overlap simultaneously here. So if you're asking the question, How can she be okay with this when I'm trying so hard? How can she be so cold when I'm falling apart? That's really the wrong question to ask, right? Because for that question to be valid, you're assuming that you are both on the same timeline. So let's look at those two timelines, because understanding the timelines is going to really help you understand what's going on. And if you want to fix this, you've got to understand what's going on, else you're just pissing in the wind, stabbing in the dark. So As far as the husband's concerned, this is your timeline. I'm assuming that you're a man watching this. If you're a woman, hope you're enjoying it. But the wife's just told you that she wants out, or your partner has told you that the relationship is over. Happened very recently, maybe in the last 24 to 72 hours, right? For you, the panic sets in, grief sets in, fear begins. Oh my goodness, over 70% of men who are hit with divorce or separation never saw it coming. You weren't expecting this most likely, so the fear kicks in, the surprise kicks in, this is all new to you, and then of course the processing begins. You've got to make some sort of sense of this, right? What the hell's going on here? So what the man assumes at this point, which is an incorrect, incorrect assumption which will get you into trouble, is that at this point in time when she sprung on you that she wants the divorce and she doesn't want to be in this marriage anymore, this is the same point that her emotional processing has begun. When she asked you for separation or divorce and you found out about this for the first time, she also is actually experiencing this in herself for the first time. But in reality, that's not what happens with a woman. Her emotional processing Certainly happened 12 months ago, probably 18 months ago, maybe 2 years ago. The typical woman is going to process a separation or divorce for 18 to 24 months, a year and a half to 2 years. She's going to be thinking about this prior to busting it on you, and she's also going to be communicating this to you in her own female, feminine way, and unfortunately female-coded language, which maybe you just haven't picked up on, but nevertheless she's been communicating in her mind, in her reality. She's been communicating to you what's going on for maybe up to 2 years. She's been processing the grief, the fear, the separation for almost probably up to 2 years, and she's gone through the same emotional journey that you're going through, that you're experiencing right now. But unfortunately, she's experienced that over a 2-year period where you're getting to experience the entire journey in one single solitary moment. So for a man, this conversation where she asked for separation, this is the beginning of the conversation for him. This is where he goes to work. This is where he fights for the marriage. But for her, this is not often the beginning of the conversation. This very often, and most usually, is actually the conclusion of the conversation for her. So she's— her conversation has gone from here to here and at the end point she brings you, or, or in, in your mind she's bringing you into the conversation. So where it ends for her, it begins for you. This is the continuum. This is the timeline, which if you don't understand that, you're going to be very confused. You're going to misinterpret what's going on. You're going to make the wrong actions, the wrong implement— uh, you're going to get the wrong ideas, and your chance of actually saving this marriage, if that's what you want to do, is going to diminish greatly, not because it couldn't be saved, but because you're misreading, misinterpreting what's going on. So the key understanding, to summarize what I've just said there, is that your separation, the separation as far as you're concerned, started yesterday. For her, the grief, the grieving, and, and coming to terms with the loss of this marriage or relationship, it didn't start yesterday. For her, it started maybe 2 years or even more for her. So the reality is you're both grieving the same marriage, you're both grieving the same loss, you're both suffering the same amount. You're just on diff— you're just grieving it at different points on the timeline. Her grief was here, your grief is here. So let's talk about how this looks in her mind and how it's different for a man. So I've used this in other videos before, but This is the hope tolerance curve, and for her, her tolerance of the situation is going to go up and down with the hope that she has for the situation to change. So when, when a situation exists in the marriage, maybe there's some behavior that she's not that thrilled about with you. When she has 100% hope that that's going to change, she has a very high tolerance for that behavior. I was just drinking is the example, right? Maybe at some point you're drinking too much, or the man's drinking too much, and she doesn't like that, but she thinks he's gonna change, he's gonna stop drinking. Her hope that you will change and stop is 100 out of 100. Therefore, her tolerance of that behavior is 100 out of 100. Now, as time goes on here and nothing— she's dropping hints, she's asking for change, she's, she's doing all this stuff, she's communicating to you that she's not happy with this situation and she wants it to change. When that behavior doesn't change, her hope drops. Now she's at maybe 50%, her tolerance of her behavior is also at 50%. So in your mind, she's just becoming moodier, she's becoming less tolerant, she's changing as far as you're concerned, which to some extent is true, she is changing. Her tolerance is changing. That's not an untrue statement, but she's not changing irrationally. She's changing because her hope of you changing is dropping, and eventually there comes a point, and this may be 1, 3, 5 years or even more, to where eventually her hope level drops down to such a critical point that she just goes, there's no hope for this marriage turning around. There's no hope for me getting what I need out of this marriage. At that point, this is where she tells you that she's leaving the marriage. She's— her effort is from here to here. She's tried to change the situation and she's grieved the marriage and she's suffered from 100 down to 20, let's say, on the Hope Scale. At 20, she decides that this is not worth fighting for anymore. This is where she lets you know that the marriage is over. Her exit point is your entry point. This you have to understand. So when you understand this curve here, you understand that women really don't leave a relationship because of one event or at one point in time. They leave because hope gradually erodes, one disappointment at a time, one broken promise at a time, one unresolved conflict at a time, one unmet need at a time, one painful experience, then another, then another. All of these things cause the hope that she needs to decline until eventually it falls below a critical level, and then she says, I'm done. At this point, you suffer terribly. At this point, grief hits you. At this point, fear hits you. At this point, loss hits you. You experience it all in one go. She's experienced it throughout all of this. She's experienced that from here to here. You as a man have not really picked up on that because we don't, right? As men, we don't, unfortunately. She suffered from here to here, and now she's done suffering. Now your suffering begins. So it's not that she hasn't suffered. It's not that she's not cold. The complaints and the criticisms that you have right now— doesn't she care about this relationship? Why won't she fight for it? Why won't— I'm willing to make the difference here. I'm willing to change. I'm willing to do it. She had all of those complaints about you from here down to here. We're just same complaint, same relationship, same everything, just different timelines. That's all that's going on here. So key understanding is women rarely leave because of one event. They leave because the hope gradually before falls below a level of tolerance that they can deal with. Hope and tolerance, they rise and fall together. As hope increases, her tolerance of behavior increases. As hope falls, her tolerance of behavior falls, uh, falls as well. So as we've just said, for her, the separation isn't the beginning, it's the end. It's the point where hope has finally run out. So the next mistake that men make in this situation, which is absolutely categorically going to screw up any chance you've got of turning this marriage around is you do what everybody does. Men do this, women do this. This is not a problem specific to men. Women do this as well. But in this situation, I'm talking to the man, right? You— I'm talking to the man who wants to turn his marriage around. And the mistake that the husband is making is that he's interpreting her behavior from the perspective of If I behaved like this, it would mean this. We tend to view the world from our own paradigm. If I say something to you and you're not entirely clear about how to interpret that, you'll view it through your paradigm of the world, through your experience, and you'll go, if I said that to somebody, I would mean this, therefore that means this. And in the same way, we look at a female psychology. Which quite frankly, a man and a woman, they're different species. They're from diff— different planets, right? John Gray had it right with "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus." Different species from different planets, different psychologies, speak different languages, and if you apply male masculine motivation to female behavior, you are going to make a right pig's ear of the situation. You're going to get it completely wrong, and you're going to look at your wife and act towards your wife in a way that is not going to be conducive to her wanting to come back. So when a woman all of a sudden gets cold, she asks for divorce or separation and then gets cold. If a man did that, that would mean, well, I never loved her, I didn't care, I'd already moved on. Because as men, we'd never do that. We would never wait 2 years and watch from the distance and then make a decision over a 2-year period. That's insane to us. If we've got a problem in front of us, we're going to fix it, we're going to communicate it. But here's the thing, right? Women are abstract. Men are concrete. Women communicate abstractly. They speak in metaphors and mysticisms and they drop hints, whereas a man is very direct and very concrete. One of the things I tell my wife all the time is concrete language is our friend. Abstraction is the enemy. If you want something, communicate it concretely. But unfortunately women don't do that typically, and unfortunately men don't understand either that women generally are communicating in a very abstract way. So if as a man we just all of a sudden out of what seems to be out of the blue said, "This marriage is over, I want a divorce," we'd interpret this as, "I never loved you, I've already moved on, I didn't care." He assumes that her behavior carries the same meaning as what it would if it came from him, and the truth of the matter is it categorically does not. It is something completely different altogether. You have to understand she's operating from different meanings, a different perspective. She's coming from abstract, you're coming from concrete. She's coming from emotional, you're coming from logical. She has different needs to you, different emotional drivers to you, different timelines to you, different interpretations to you, and her needs are very, very different to yours. And part of the problem here is she's confiding in her friends and you're confiding in your friends, and when she speaks woman to another woman, the other woman immediately understands what she's saying. Another woman immediately understand— understands the abstract nature of the communication, and her friends and peer group are going to reinforce that she's being clear. The woman is going to believe that she's being very clear with you, and actually she's being abstract. And quite likely you're communicating with your peer group, your— which are likely male— and they're, and they're reaffirming to you because they only understand concrete language and they're logical. And she's communicating in abstract language and emotional, that she's off her head, that she's time of the month, the emotional change. She's illogical, she's irrational, she's going through whatever, she's mentally ill. Because for a man looking at a woman without the understanding of logical, emotional, concrete, abstract, different species, different language, different patterns, you are going to get it very, very wrong. Because in your male peer group, peer group, if a man showed up demonstrating the behavior that, that was abstract, that was non-concrete, that was emotional, he would be looked at as a nut job. He would be looked at as unhinged, unstable, because that's not how men communicate. So the problem is here that in this situation, the man's only reference point to insight into her behavior is himself. He only has himself to reference, which is not a good thing. So some key understandings here to help you move forward is your wife's behavior right now doesn't mean what it would mean if you were behaving that way. You're using your psychology right now to interpret her psychology. You're using your emotional drivers to determine her emotional drivers. Or in other words, the only decoding mechanism, the only decoding device that you have here right now is yourself. That's why I'm making this video, to help you get outside of that and to actually understand what's going on so you can make some meaningful impact into the situation. So the next thing to understand here is that the woman, the wife, is leaving the relationship. Fundamentally, she's asking for a divorce or separation because she wants relief. This is the driver that she is looking for. She's not looking to be with another man, most likely. She's not looking to take your money, most likely. Now, I'm not ruling that out. There's obviously going to be some circumstances where that is true, But 90— I'm, I'm talking about normal, healthy marriages here, right? 90% of the time, 95% of the time, that isn't what's going on. The emotional pressure has reached a boiling point with inside of the marriage that she can no longer tolerate, or she can no longer live with, and she's looking for emotional relief. And her nervous system is telling her, is communicating to her that she's going to get that relief outside of the marriage, not inside of the marriage. She's not looking to hurt you. She's not looking to be cold or any of those things. She's simply looking for nervous system reset, nervous system relief. So when hope has been declining of that relief for her for many years, the decision itself to leave the relationship— and as I've said, she may have been contemplating that for multiple years right now. The decision itself to move can often produce relief. When she finally gets the courage to announce the separation, she experiences a huge amount of relief. But this relief, that is just a pressure valve, is, is often very misunderstood. Relief does not automatically mean that she's happy about this, that she hates you, that she never loved you, that she never cared, that she's the ice queen, that she wants to be with another man, that she just wants to live life with— doesn't mean any of that stuff necessarily. Now, it might, I'm not ruling it out, but it doesn't— you can't jump to that conclusion, right? More often than not, in 9 out of 10 cases, what it actually means is that world-long emotionally draining battle has temporarily stopped. She's got respite, she's got relief. She's been walking on eggshells for years, she's been living in emotional chaos for years, she's been suffering emotional pressure and stress, stress and all of that for years. And all of a sudden, temporary relief has come and there's a ceasefire in this battle. And that is what she's happy about. That is what she's responding to, not the fact that she hates you and she wants out and she never loved you and this marriage never meant anything to her. So understand, men, relief that she is showing is not proof that she never loved you. And again, I'm using relief interchangeably with the coldness that you're experiencing, with the distance that you're experiencing right now. Does not mean she never loved you. It does not mean that at all. If you think that, you're going to put yourself in a position— you're going to be a 3-year-old with a hand grenade, basically. Quickly. You're going to put yourself in a position that's going to make it very difficult for you to turn this around. So again, relief isn't proof she never loved you or doesn't love you. Relief often follows the end of a prolonged conflict. Can we agree that that's what's happening here? At least it's plausible. Don't confuse emotional relief with a difference. Just because she's now experiencing a certain amount of relief. The fighting has stopped temporarily for now for her. That is not indifference or coldness. So the next point to get to here is until you do this right, till you understand that, that she's not against you, she's, she's actually, all she's trying to do is find some relief from the emotional stress. You're going to be treating her like she's your opponent. She's not your enemy. And if you treat your life, wife, like she is the enemy, by coming up with the wrong, unhelpful interpretations. She's cold, she's cruel, she's broken, she's mentally ill. All of them. I hear all of these with the men that I work with. These, these are very, very common phrases that get thrown around in the early days of working together. She's cruel, she's mentally ill. Hear it all the time. She's got some kind of personality disorder. Or in other words, Fundamentally, what you're saying is, she's my opponent, or she's broken, and it's— she's my— I have to fix her. This is not what's happening. So a better question to ask yourself in this situation is not why is she so cold, or how can she be so distant, or why does she not care? What reality is she actually responsible for, actually responding to here? That's the question, right? Because understand this, this is critical. Marriage at its most core level is ultimately two people, you and her, attempting to get their needs met. Right now you're in pain, you're suffering. If you're still watching this video 20, 25 minutes into it, whatever it is, it's because you're trying to get your needs met. And right now the behavior that she's engaging in and the the path that she's taken and the decision that she's making are interfering with your needs getting met. And that's not a judgment. I'm not— that's not a put-down. That's just a fact. That's what it is. In the same way that she tried to get her needs met for a long time, she didn't. And now she's decided that the only way she's going to get those needs met are outside of the marriage. Your opinion is that the only way your needs are going to get met is if she's inside the marriage. You have the same goal, you have the same outcome, you're both trying to get your needs met. You just have a very ineffective strategy of how to do that in a way where it's mutually beneficial to both of you. It's win-win to both of you. Right now you are in a win-lose scenario. For her to get her needs met right now, you lose. Or for you to get your needs met, she loses. This is not a scenario that has any longevity, right? So when we understand this, that we're just two people trying to get our needs met, the only thing— her strategy differs from yours. That's the only difference, right? Her behavior makes sense to her within her experience of the marriage. It doesn't make sense to you because she's been having a different experience of this marriage. So key understandings at this point is that your wife is not the enemy here. She's not behaving irrationally. There's actually— there's really no such thing as irrational behavior. When you look at behavior and it's irrational, all you're saying is, I don't understand why that person is doing that. I can tell you that no behavior is accidental. All behavior serves a purpose. Your behavior My behavior, her behavior, everybody's behavior. It's designed to produce an outcome, to get a need met. All behavior serves a purpose. No behavior is just irrational. You just don't understand the behavior that she's trying to— or the outcome that she's trying to achieve. And the behavior makes no sense to you because there's no universe where you would behave that way to get any outcome. So because we're evaluating the marriage and her psychology through our own lens and our own psychology. We go, there's no universe where I would behave that way, therefore this behavior must be, must be irrational. There's no, there's no circumstance that I can find where I would behave that way, so therefore this is irrational behavior. But to her, she's simply responding logically to the reality she's experiencing, and her behavior is serving a purpose as far as she's concerned. It's not irrational if you understand the purpose. Now, it may not be productive, and it may not get the purpose that it's designed to get. That is not what I'm claiming, but it certainly isn't irrational. Maybe misguided, right? That would be a better way to say it. The behavior is misguided in light of the outcome that it's designed to produce, but it isn't irrational. So the transformation here is stop, stop asking, why is she, why is she acting this way? She's trying to get her needs met and she's trying to get some relief. That's why she's acting this way. How can she be so cold? What does this mean about the marriage? What does this mean about her? These are not helpful questions. These are not productive questions. Better questions are: what experience— what has her experience been of me in this marriage that's causing her to need to leave the marriage to get relief? What has happened to her hope to cause it to drop to such a level that her tolerance has gone to zero and she now needs— feels like she needs to leave this marriage? What meaning has she assigned to this marriage? What needs has her behavior trying to get? What, what is, what needs is she trying to meet here? If you, if you want to get her back, and I've got a workshop on this, links in the description if you want to, if you want to see this. Let me ask you the question: if she comes back into this marriage, is it going to be for her reasons or for your reasons? Well, the answer is for her reasons. She's going to come back for her reasons. What are her reasons? Well, it's obviously her needs. If she can get her needs met within this marriage, then there's a high probability she'll come back. So you have to understand what her needs are. I cover that in that workshop, how to figure that out. So get that if you want to learn more about that. But basically, when you understand that she's just trying to get her needs met, and the solution here is to find out what her needs are and meet them, and then learn how to communicate effectively what your needs are and get your needs met too. This is not just about you being a simp and going, so I gotta meet her needs and I don't get mine. No, no, no, no, no. My friend, no, this has to be win-win or no deal. The end outcome here is you both get your needs met, or it's not fair that she comes back if only your needs get met. And it's not fair on you if she comes back with the— with— into a marriage where only her needs get met, right? So key understanding: the moment you stop trying to defeat your wife like she's your opponent. And the moment that you stop trying to interpret and understand her behavior and motivation through your behavior and your motivation, you become capable of understanding her. Now, not a single marriage was ever transformed— I'm sure really no wife has ever really come back by being proved wrong. You transform your marriage by understanding the reality that she is actually responding to right now. You, you transform your marriage by that her behavior serves a purpose and is trying to produce an outcome, designed to produce an outcome. And it— your marriage changes by understanding what that outcome is and helping her achieve that outcome within the confines of the marriage instead of going outside of it. This is really actually very simple stuff. There's nothing complicated here. You just have to meet her needs, and then you have to find a way to get her to meet your needs. That's it. If you can do that, Happy days, everybody's happy. So the identity shift that takes place in the successful men, and I've seen thousands of men, I've worked with thousands of men at this point, is she's not your opponent. She's not your project to fix. She's not your mental patient to diagnose. She's just a human being responding to the world as she understands it. Who's experiencing a lot of pain and she wants some relief from that pain. I think that describes you very accurately as well. You are not her opponent. She is not your project to fix and she is not your mental patient to diagnose. You are simply a man, a human being responding to the world the best way you can according to what you understand, trying to get your needs met and to reduce and eliminate, minimize the pain that you experience along the way. You both want the same thing. You just, you're on this men are from Mars, women are from Venus, emotional, logical, abstract, concrete paradigm. And if you can understand that, then you can actually get on the same page, you can get on the same timeline, you can start to meet her needs without sacrificing yourself and having to become a simp. She can start to meet your needs without having to walk on eggshells and be emotionally devastated. Bada boom, bada bam, everybody's happy. This is actually really incredibly simple stuff when you understand it. So let's wrap this puppy up. Let's take this thing home. Let's bring it home. The husband who actually saves his marriage stops asking How do I make her think like me? How do I make her see how much I love her, etc., etc.? Because if she knew how much I loved her, knew what I'd do for her, she'd come back. And he starts asking the question, how do I understand the world that she's actually living in? How do I actually meet her where she is? So let's wrap this up. Your wife's behavior isn't the problem. Your wife— the interpretation, the way that you're interpreting your wife's behavior. It may be the problem, may not be the problem, but it's a good starting place. It's a good place to start. So diagnoses, we all love diagnoses, right? It doesn't help us at all. It simply describes the behavior. I've got a video on avoidant detachment, avoidant personality disorder. I'll put it, I'll put it at the end of this video if you want to watch that. It's a very good video. But when you get that diagnosis of diagnosis of avoidant personality doesn't tell you anything apart from what you already know. You already know she's avoiding you. The diagnosis simply describes the behavior that she's engaging in. It doesn't tell you what's causing it, doesn't tell you what's driving it, doesn't tell you what she's trying to avoid, doesn't tell you what she's trying to achieve, doesn't give you a path forward, doesn't do anything at all. Diagnosing your wife with anything you want to diagnose her with— multiple pers— uh, Narcissistic personality disorder, avoidant personality, anxious attachment, it doesn't matter, bipolar, any, any diagnosis you want to put on this simply describes the behavior that you already know she's engaging in. Doesn't solve one lick of the problem. Understanding the mechanism that drives that behavior is exactly what creates the transformation. So if you want to go more into that, I talk about how you understand the mechanisms that actually drive the behavior, not just the diagnosis. In this video here on avoidant personality, check that out. If you like these videos, give me a thumbs up, subscribe, leave a comment. Really, really helps. And if you, if you want some help with your marriage, there's some links in the description. Lots of options to work together one-to-one. I've got some programs, etc., all in the description. Check it out. God bless you, and I'll see you in the next video.