Why You’re Obsessed With Saving Your Marriage (And How To Regain Control)

Hey, Cody Butler here, and today I want to answer the question of how do I stop obsessing over saving my marriage and focus on myself when every part of me is terrified of losing her? So in this video today, you're going to learn why you're obsessing over the marriage, why every, every little thing she does is having such a terrible impact on you, and what you need to do to actually get to a better place yourself emotionally and how to actually move forward and save this marriage. So Let's talk about who this video is for quickly. It's for men in late-stage marriage crisis. If your wife has asked for a divorce, the marriage— told you the marriage is over, she wants a divorce, she's emotionally checked out, the fear is becoming overwhelming and you're really struggling to deal with it, and maybe your entire world is collapsing into one question: how do I save this? How do I turn this around? Then this video is going to be for you. Also, if you're struggling with the constant anxiety of Am I losing her? Is there still hope for this marriage? What does this mean? Dealing with the uncertainty of a divorce scenario. I'm gonna share with you today exactly how to get through this and find a stable place where you can, where you can stabilize yourself and create the best environment possible, A, for you to move forward, and B, to save the marriage. So let's talk about why men become obsessed with saving the marriage, why you can't eat, you can't sleep, every little thing she does triggers you. Every little text message, every little— you're hanging on her every word. And we have to understand this because if we can't get this, then we can't save the marriage. And what it actually comes down to is the marriage becomes fused with your masculine identity. The marriage and your masculine identity, who you are as a man, have become one. And when the marriage is now threatened, you as a man are threatened. And if If we can't separate these two out, then we're going to have problems moving forward. So what's happening is right now the marriage is being seen as proof of your self-worth, proof of your competency, proof of your masculinity, proof of your self-esteem, proof of your value as a human being. We fuse these two things together, and when, when the marriage fails, we see that that equates to us failing as a human being. The marriage fails, it's evidence and proof that we're incompetent or we're lacking masculinity. And what we, what we interpret this as and why it becomes such an anxious situation and such an obsessive situation is we basically equate the failure of the marriage to I failed, I'm broken, I'm inadequate at a deep subconscious level. And when that happens, effectively, to summarize that, the marriage has become a symbol of your self-worth is what's going on here. And if we can't separate your sense of who you are as a human being with the marriage, it's going to put you in a place to where you're not acting appropriately. It's not going to put you in the best place to move forward. So the big misunderstanding here is that he believes, the man believes, that external conditions, i.e., the marriage, determines his internal, determines his internal condition. So if the marriage is fine, you're fine. If the marriage is stable, you're, you're stable. If the marriage is performing well, then you're happy. Or, or to summarize that, when the marriage is fine and she's responding positively and things are moving in the right direction, you're calm, stable, and collected. But when the marriage moves in the wrong direction, or she gives you a sign or a symbol or an indication, which she's inevitably going to do, that the marriage is not moving forward, that it is going to end, then you internally collapse. So your external condition is, is, uh, is determining your internal condition right now. So the marriage is— the marriage right now, her behavior within the marriage is determining your identity. If it's moving in the right direction, you feel like you're succeeding. If it's not, it feels like you're failing as a human being. It certainly determines your emotional stability. Again, this is when I work with men, this is one of the biggest challenges that we have to get over, because the goal is to establish emotional safety with your wife. And when she goes up, your mood goes down, or vice versa. When she gives you the slightest indication that, that something's going wrong, you just become emotionally unstable. Then how can you stabilize the marriage? How can you create emotional safety when you are basing your personal emotional stability on an inherently unstable situation. And of course, the marriage right now is also determining your sense of self-worth in terms of how the world is seeing you and also how you're seeing yourself as well. So the problem, the misunderstanding, is that the man is seeing the external situation as the root of his problems, when in reality his eternal internal situation equals the fruit of the situation. So if you're— if your situation is unstable right now, it's an indication that you're unstable. You are manifesting what you are into the world. If you are stable, your situation will be stable. If you are unstable, your situation will be unstable. But the man sees it the other way around. He has those roles inverted to where he believes that when his external situation is stable, he develops stability, and his internal stability is a result of that external stability. So the reality here that we have to move into and accept is that internal state produces external outcomes. She needs to see a different external outcome from you. She needs, she needs stability. She needs rest. She needs relief. She needs predictability, reliability, and It is your internal state that produces these, these, these qualities and outcomes that she's actually looking for. And ultimately, it's your identity that's driving that behavior. When you, when you are challenged, when your identity as a man, your masculine identity, and your, your identity as a provider, your identity as being capable, competent, is challenged by the marriage, it is going to destabilize you. So that emotional stability, or lack of, is what's driving the relationship dynamics right now. And as long as you are tethered to the outcomes within the marriage, you are going to be driving dynamics that are not conducive to reconciliation. So ultimately what happens here is the man has the Root and the Fruit reversed. We've already said it, but just to summarize, he believes that the external situation is the root of the problem and the fruit is his internal state. If the marriage is stable, the root, then his internal state, the fruit, will be stable as well. When actually it's completely the other way around. The man has reversed those situations, which is making it impossible to actually get any kind of predictable outcomes within the situation. So what does obsession look like? In a marriage crisis, in a divorce, divorce crisis? Well, it's basically emotional swings that are tied to the marriage status. So I'll get a message from a man one day saying, "She looked at me and gave me a hug and said I love you," and he's on cloud nine. And then the next day he goes, "But she said she still wants to move forward with a divorce," and now he's desperately depressed again. And the mood is going back and forth. And I'll get a message saying, "She said this, what does that mean?" Trying to interpret every single little tiny signal. So what it, what it actually comes down to is your mood is controlled by her tone, your mood is controlled by her moods, by her reactions. You, you're up or down based on the slightest sign of hope or rejection. Or in other words, you, you've moved into a state of hyper-monitoring. You read into every text message, you read into her body language, you read into interactions, you read everything, you read into the tiniest little signals. Looking desperately for some hope that the marriage can move forward or confirmation that it's over. And what this produces is constant overanalysis, which ultimately results in anxiety, stress, depression, a lack of emotional stability, a loss of emotional stability within you. So this hyper-monitoring, looking for positive signs that the marriage is over, is actually going to have the exact opposite effect. It is going to destroy emotional stability which is exactly what your wife is looking to escape from right now. So what's happened here, the core problem in this situation that you have to address if you want to save your marriage, is that you have abdicated the role of self-regulation to your wife. Or in other words, instead of being able to have a higher level of emotional sophistication, emotional intelligence, self-control, self-regulation, to where you are able to control and regulate your moods and to produce stability within yourself, irrespective of what's going on out in the world, you've given that, you've given that role to the relationship. So when the relationship is going well, you're self-regulated. When the relationship is not going well, you're not self-regulated at all. Or effectively, what you've done here is you've outsourced the emotional stability of the marriage to her. Effectively, she, she is very confused right now. She's very emotional right now. And you have tied your self-regulation to immense instability, and this just simply isn't going to work well. So how does that work? Well, you've outsourced— you've literally outsourced your emotional state to her emotions, to her nervous system, to her reactions, which causes you, uh, you lose discipline internally, you lose productivity, and of course your emotional sovereignty is now gone. You know, the goal here, when you have the ability to regulate yourself internally through making choices and through emotional sophistication, then you have emotional sovereignty. You are, you are making choices to be stable. You are making choices to be emotionally regulated, which is what she needs. That is masculine leadership. That is what men do. We are in control. We are strength regulated. We have the ability for immense strength, but we also have the ability to regulate that strength through our own nervous system. We do not abdicate the regulation of what we do to her nervous system, her emotions, and her reactions. So why this makes the situation worse when you do this, when you lose this sense of self-control and emotional sovereignty, or sovereignty, she experiences you as emotionally dependent on her. She experiences you as unstable and she experiences you as needing management. You become a dependent instead of being a regulating force within the marriage that helps herself regulate, that allows her to question her decisions that are in a way that, that benefits you, or in other words, allows her to start to destabilize her certainty about leaving the relationship. She now starts to manage you. And, and in an environment where she's actually leaving the marriage because she needs relief from the marriage, when you are obsessively monitoring every single little interaction and you have outsourced all emotional independence and sovereignty to her, you are now adding more pressure to an environment where all she's doing is trying to seek escape from that pressure. So effectively what's happened here is a role inversion has occurred. Your role in the relationship is to— your role is to be stable, predictable, reliable, and solid. To be the oak tree, to be the rock, to be the shelter from the storm. Your emotional stability allows her to anchor her instability against you and provide stability where there is none right now. But the problem is that role— that, that, that role has inverted. There's an inversion happened to where she now needs to be the rock to anchor your stability. She needs to be the shelter from the storm. She needs to be, uh, the stable one to manage your unpredictable emotions because you've, you've outsourced the sovereignty of your emotions. So what happens is she becomes the emotional stabilizer. She becomes the red regulator of your emotions, and she becomes the caretaker of your emotions. She becomes emotionally responsible for you. And hopefully you can see all of these things are very negative. If you want to save this marriage, you have to be the emotional stabilizer. You have to be the regulator, the regulating force, the stability, and you have to become the caretaker of her emotions, not the other way around. And the problem is, as we go back to the beginning of this, this video today, because you're so— so much of your personality and identity is attached to this marriage right now, it's, it's become completely impossible for you to assume that role. So what happens is she's forced into a role that she desperately needs you to occupy. She needs you to be the stabilizing force. She needs you to be the rock. And that is when the transformation takes place. That is when reconciliation takes place. She simply needs a rock. She simply needs a stabilizing force in her life. She simply needs shelter from the storm. But unfortunately, in this current condition, you forced her into your rock and your shelter from the, the storm. You've reversed, you've, you've reversed the roles to where she is now performing the masculine role of the relationship and you are assuming the feminine role. This is why she's not attracted. This is why she doesn't want to have sex with you, because you're not showing up at this point in the masculine role. This is what needs to change. And as soon as that changes, as soon as you start to really operate in true masculine leadership and take a strong, secure masculine identity where the role of— and your identity of who you are as a man, your self-worth, your level of competency all of these things are now completely detached and, and removed from the marriage. It doesn't matter what goes on in the marriage. It doesn't challenge who you are as a human being. Only then can you start to step into that role of protector, provider, prophet, and priest, the masculine role that she's desperate for right now, and she's been forced into. So the emotional dynamic of the marriage right now, and this is very important to understand, is right now she's already dysregulated. Her nervous system is overwhelmed and she's already emotionally exhausted. This is very taxing for her. The reason she wants out of this marriage, she doesn't want to get away from you, she needs, she needs relief from the pressure, from the exhaustion, from the overwhelm, from the dysregulation. She's already in these states and this is what she's trying to get away from. And when you're in this obste— obsessive state, in this role reversal state, as you've seen, you are simply adding more to the emotional dynamic that's pushing her away. She's essentially, in asking for a divorce, saying, "I need relief from this relationship," and the response to that is to pile on more pressure in that moment that she's looking for relief from. And when we put it in those terms, it becomes very easy to see why she wants out of this marriage. The solution is to destabilize that certainty by doing the exact opposite, by providing the relief within the marriage. So what's going on now is not only does she have to manage this dysregulated, overwhelmed, exhausted state that she's in, she also has to manage your emotional state. She also has to regulate your panic, and she has to assume the role of a stabilizing your instability. Because when you become unstable, there's a cost for her to play, pay for that. You start to apply pressure, you start to do things that increase the dysregulation within her. Or in other words, emotional pressure increases upon her dramatically when you're in this condition. And this pressure is exactly what she's trying to escape. You've given her more of what she's trying to get away from. So what is the shift required from you, the man? So you need to stop focusing, uh, you need to focus on yourself, not the marriage. So what does that not mean? It doesn't mean just distracting yourself. It doesn't mean avoidance of conversation, gym clichés, hey, go to the gym, work out. Doesn't mean pretending not to care, and it certainly doesn't mean just emotionally shut— shutting down. What focusing on yourself does mean is developing that sense of emotional self-regulation, being in control of yourself. Your goal is to be the rock, the shelter, the shelter from the storm, the oak tree, to develop a sense of emotional sovereignty within yourself that is independent of anything going on within the relationship. You're stable because you choose to be stable. You have control of your emotions because you're a man in control. You have discipline. You have the ability to stabilize yourself under pressure. You are not reliant on her to create that stability. And the way you do this is by separating your identity as a man through the marital outcome that you're experiencing. If your marriage fails, that does not mean that you have failed. If your marriage fails, that does not mean that you're incompetent. Ultimately, as we've said, the marriage outcome is, is stimulating a negative sense of self-worth. So this is what focusing on yourself— in the Win Your Wife Back program, we talk about working on yourself. Well, this is what it is: emotional regulation, emotional sovereignty, discipline, stability under pressure. This allows you to remove all of the pressure that's on her right now to stabilize you to allow her to step into the role of being the female, the woman, and allow her to really embrace her emotions, allow you to step into the masculine role that is secure, stable, or in other words, protector, provider, prophet, and priest for the marriage instead of emotionally dependent. If you want some help with that and you're interested in the Win Your Wife Back program, there's a workshop link in the description. Go through that workshop, see what you think, and start there. So moving on. There's a crit— the critical principles here that must be adopted if you have any hope of saving this marriage is the man must detach from the situation. He must detach his identity from the marriage. So he might— the— his emotional stability must be detached from the outcome and from her every move. Your sense of self-worth, of who you are, has to be detached from her moves. Your identity as a man has to be detached from this marriage. The marriage is a data point, not a verdict on who you are. So these things must be detached from the appearance of the marriage, her emotional state, and any temporary emotional conditions that are going on within the marriage. She's a woman, she's going to be emotional. Women are emotional creatures. Men are Men are logical, women are emotional. Her state is going to be emotional on a good day, and this is not a good day for her. She's going to be up and down. And if you're attached to that, if your emotional state is attached to that, then this is not going to be good for healing the marriage and reconciling, getting her to change her mind. So what emotional strength actually looks like— this is again authentic masculine leadership. One of the things that we teach within, within the Win Your Wife Back program is that transformation comes through identity shift, not, not through just tactics and stuff like that. You have to change your identity. Behavior comes out of identity. So that emotional strength, the identity needs to shift to where you have stability during uncertainty. During uncertainty, a strong man is able to produce stability within himself in uncertain times. A strong masculine leader is able to stabilize while the whole world around him is destabilizing. It means being able to be calm during emotional storms, be shelter from the storm. You need to be shelter from the storm. Right now you are the storm, because she needs shelter from this storm as well. And when you provide that shelter, she will come to you. This emotional strength looks like predictability under pressure. It's not what you do when you've had a good night's sleep, you've got a full belly of food, and everything's going well that determines who you are. We find out who you are and what your true leadership is when you're under pressure. Can you become predictable and stable under pressure? This is what we work on. This is what needs to be worked on— emotional self-regulation. How can you expect her to follow your lead and look to you for, to emotionally regulate her state when you can't even regulate your own state. You're asking her to do something that you're unable to do for yourself right now. You need her to emotionally self-regulate, to stabilize. So ultimately, we can say the outcome here is becoming emotionally grounded, emotionally safe, emotionally stable. These are the things that your wife desperately craves. And if you're able to introduce these back into the relationship while eliminating the opposite— emotional instability, emotional lack of emotional safety, etc.— then she is going to choose to come back. So every, every cloud has a silver, silver lining, right? So what's the opportunity in this crisis? What's the silver lining here? Well, right now, your wife, believe it or not— and I know this is hard to believe for a lot of men because she's It seems as though she's chosen this outcome. She's chosen divorce, therefore she's chosen these emotions that she's experiencing that she wants to get away from. But that, that's just not true, and we don't have time to cover it in this video. But right now she's moving through emotional storms, she's moving through overwhelm, she's moving through confusion, she's moving through exhaustion, and we can go on. She's suffering anxiety, fear, all of, all of these emotions that she's looking for relief from, and unfortunately right now she sees that her only option for relief is actually leaving this marriage and getting away from you. So the opportunity is to show her that you can become that emotional shelter, that you can become the stabilizing presence within the marriage. She doesn't have to leave the marriage to get stabilization, and you can become calm instead of chaos. You can become the calming force in the relationship instead of the storm. This is your opportunity to do that. And this is why I've seen literally thousands of situations turn around that was seemingly impossible, that the woman was absolutely adamant that she was going to leave, that there was no hope because the man simply didn't understand how he had attached his identity to the outcome of the marriage and how that was completely destabilizing all of his behavior. And that destabilizing behavior is actually what she was looking to get away from. Once we were able to separate that out, then we can start to rebuild the relationship from the ground up in a way that she is going to choose to come back to you regardless of what she's already said. So let me give you some practical advice here. The best way to get better results is to ask better questions. And the core internal shift, or the questions to shift from here, uh, right now you're asking the question, how do I stop losing her? Or how do I turn this around? How do I save this marriage? How do I change her mind? That's the wrong question, and that is going to lead you to a state of panic, anxiety, etc., etc. And start asking the question, how do I become emotionally stable regardless of the outcome of this situation? The more you can detach from the outcome of the situation, the more stability you can, you can muster internally, the more you take back your own emotional sovereignty, and the more you're able to act intelligently and sophisticated with sophistication upon the situation in a way that she can feel, that she can hear, and that she can respond to positively. So as long as you're asking this question, how do I stop losing her, you're going to continue to lose her. As soon as you start asking, how do I become more emotionally stable regardless of the outcome, this is where the marriage starts to turn around. So if you're looking for answers to this question, how do I become, uh, more stable, then I've got a free workshop. There's a link in the description. It's all in there. Go ahead and grab that. But the core takeaways from this class today Uh, the obsession that you're experiencing right now is destroying emotional leadership. She needs you to step up and lead. You've abdicated that role, put her in a position of leadership, and she's leading this marriage to divorce right now. You need to take back the role of authentic masculine leadership in a way that she chooses to voluntarily enter into and follow. Not control, not manipulation, not telling her that this is your role, you need to follow her. Presenting a path forward in true leadership that, that it's the only thing she wants. There is no better alternative. You are the best option for her. The second thing is emotional dependency. This emotional dependency creates a role inversion. It means that you're now dependent on her for your emotional stability instead of her becoming dependent on you for her emotional stability. She's become the stabilizing force in this marriage. You need to take that role back immediately. Thirdly, is stability. Stability that she's desperate for from you cannot come from the marriage. If you're looking at the marriage to produce that instability for, for, for her, then that's, that's, that's crazy. Basically what you're saying, I need this marriage to produce stability so I can produce stability for this marriage. Or in other words, you're looking at the fire and going, give me heat and then I'll put wood in you. It doesn't work that way. You have to put wood into the fire for heat to come out. And that emotional strength is eternal, internal. It's not coming from external, from the marriage. So the man, you, this is, this is, this is a non, these are non-negotiables. If you want to turn this marriage around, you have to become emotionally sovereign again. You have to take back your emotional sovereignty. You have to become emotionally disciplined, and you have to emotionally, you have to learn how to emotionally self-regulate. To the exclusion of her behavior or the marriage. So to put that simply, you have to become emotionally sovereign, not emotionally dependent on her nervous system. Right now, most men accidentally increase the pressure that the wife is trying to escape from through divorce through this emotional dependency. Uh, the emotional safety that we're asking for here requires stability. So again, if you want to learn how to do this, I've got a free masterclass called You Can Win Her Back. I go into what actually works in late-stage marriage crisis and divorce, how to stop reinforcing the disconnection, and how to become emotionally stabilizing again under pressure. And if you found this content useful, if it helped you in any way, uh, please, please return that by leaving a comment, giving a thumbs up, subscribing, sharing this content. It really helps to get this content out. It doesn't cost you anything. And if you got something out of it and you want to give back, That's how you can do that. Just do those things. So that's it for me. And if you want to learn more about, uh, any of these things, watch this video here, and I'll be back in another video very soon.